Wetlands International aims to reverse the rapid loss of mangrove forests along working towards the achievement of sustainable uses of mangroves. On this page you can find an overview of the current and past mangrove restoration activities of Wetlands International in different parts of the world, which provides you with our best practices and lessons learned.

Action Description:

Despite their biodiversity, economic and environmental values, many native mangrove ecosystems along the tropical shorelines of Asia, Africa and Latin America are critically degraded or completely destroyed. The total global mangrove areas have declined by 25% from an estimated 20 million hectares. The current mangrove deforestation rate is estimated at 0.66% per year, which is 3-5 times as much as the average global forest loss.

We realise that we cannot restore the world's degrading mangrove forests on our own. Therefore, we share the knowledge that we gained with others. The success of our field projects provides us with the tools to inform governments, private sector, communities, other NGOs and most importantly, our partners on how to prevent and reverse the rapid loss of these important ecosystems. For more details on these activities, please visit our actions to conserve and restore mangroves for coastal resilience.

Mangrove restoration activities

Since 2004, we have restored thousands of hectares of mangrove areas. A large scale mangrove restoration project followed on the damaged coastal areas due to the Tsunami in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia (Sumatra and Java) and Malaysia. We adopted a unique approach: restoration & management of coastal ecosystems, such as mangroves, sand dunes and coral reefs through a community-led approach. This improved the biodiversity and economic well-being of hundreds of coastal communities in these five countries: India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. We have also conducted restoration work in Guinea Bissau and Sierra Leone. In our restoration work, we use the 'bio-rights' microcredit scheme to enable the local communities to manage their mangroves sustainably.

Currently, we are implementing restoration activities in Flores, Indonesia and Senegal, Africa.